Free Lo! by Charles Fort Page B

independent of drafts, sometimes moving against drafts. Also there were flows of stones, or bombardments. About thirty panes of glass were broken by stones, in the daytime, some of them in the presence of neighbors. This is the story, as it was told by reporters of the Derry Journal and the Coleraine Constitution, who had been sent to investigate. Probably there was a girl, aged fourteen or fifteen, in this house, but as to the ages of Mr. McLaughlin’s niece and maidservant, I could not learn particulars.
    The conventionally scientific, or fishmongerish, thing to do would be to think of some commonplace explanation of the soot, and forget the stones. There would not be so much science, if people had good memories. The flows of stones can be explained as peggings by neighbors, if the soot be forgotten.
    Our data have been bullied by two tyrannies. On one side, the spiritualists have arbitrarily taken over strange occurrences, as manifestations of “the departed.” On the other side, conventional science has pronounced against everything that does not harmonize with its systematizations. The scientist goes investigating, about as, to match ribbons, a woman goes shopping. The spiritualist stuffs the maws of his emotions. One is too dainty, and the other is gross. Perhaps, between these two, we shall someday be considered models of well-bred behavior.
    Showers of frogs and worms and periwinkles—and now its showers of nails. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, Oct. 16, 1888—dispatch from Brownsville, Texas—that, on the night of the 12th, the lighthouse, at Point Isabel, occupied by Mrs. Schreiber, widow of the keeper, who had departed not long before, had been struck by a rain of nails. The next night, about dark, came another shower of nails. More variety—also down pelted clods of earth and oyster shells. Bombardments continued. People gathered and saw showers, mostly of nails, but could not find out where they were coming from.
    In Human Nature, March, 1871, is a story of flows of corn that were passing from a locked crib, in Buchanan, Virginia. But, in this case, it was said that apparitions were seen, and mostly, at least so far as apparitions are concerned, our accounts are not ghost stories.
    There have been mysterious showers of money, in public places. I have gravely copied accounts from newspapers, but there must have been something the matter with my gravity, because I put the notes away, without indexing them, and just now can’t find them, among about 60,000. One of the stories was of coins that, for several days, a few years ago, fell intermittently into Trafalgar Square, London. Traffic was so interfered with by scramblers that the police investigated, but could trace nothing to the buildings around the Square. Every now and then there was a jingle of coins, and a scramble, and the annoyance of the police was increased. They investigated.
    Maybe there are experimenters who have learned to do such things, teleportatively. I’d see some sport in it, myself, if it wouldn’t cost too much.
    There was a piker with pennies, in London, several years ago. New York Evening World, Jan. 18, 1928—flows of copper coins and chunks of coal, in a house in Battersea, London, occupied by a family named Robinson. “The Robinsons are educated people, and scout the idea of a supernatural agency. However they are completely baffled, and declare the phenomena take place in closed rooms, thus precluding the possibility of objects being thrown from outside.”
    There’s small chance of such phenomena being understood, just at present, because everybody’s a logician. Almost everybody reasons: “There are not supernatural occurrences: therefore these alleged phenomena did not occur.” However through some closed skulls, mostly independently of eyes and ears and noses, which tell mostly only what they should tell, is penetrating the idea that flows of coins and chunks of coal may be as natural as the flows of rivers. Those of us who